Take the Cheese

Take the cheese: Hey, Max Wells, where are the flowers, the candy or, at least, the little personal thank-you note for our fellow Dallas Observer peon Matt Pulle? C’mon, a man of your age and background should know a little something about gentility—and how to trim a candle and handle…

Here’s the Pitch

Those of you who still may be wondering why radio jock Don Imus’ racist comment about the Rutgers women’s basketball team caused such a fuss…well, you’re chowderheads. Maybe what you need is a little lesson in history, Jim Crow, racism and the dignity conveyed by sports. Lucky for you, the…

Cheesy

Cheesy: Cheese is coming, and it’s going to eat your children. Don’t believe us? Then ask The Dallas Morning News, which this past Sunday declared a “growing crisis” over cheese in Dallas. Gouda God, whatever will we do? Wait. Wrong cheese. And wrong crisis. Calm yourself, but just a bit…

Ding! Baby’s Ready!

Why would anyone rub a baby with butter? So it would brown properly after you stuff it with an onion and bake it in a 350-degree oven for 20 minutes per pound, of course. Geez, don’t you people coo…no wait. My bad. Turns out that massaging babies with Palmer’s Baby…

Wheels Turning

Wheels turning: Buzz has never really grasped the story of Job, the pious man ineffably effed by God on a dare from Satan. Job suffers everything but a Novocain-less root canal but still praises God. What a sucker. So, obviously, we’ve never understood why men like James Curtis Giles, the…

Ride, Sally, Ride

Sure, I suppose if you’re going to have a group bike ride called Tour Dallas, you’ll need to include some downtown streets. I mean—sniff—if riding downtown under the watchful eye of tour guardians, sag wagons and plenty of traffic-minded cops is your idea of touring Dallas, well good for you,…

MYOB

MYOB: It’s good that the Dallas mayoral candidates have finally found something to disagree about. It was getting hard to tell some of them apart. Tom Leppert and Darrell Jordan—c’mon, they’re really the same guy, aren’t they? Someone’s funnin’ with us. On paper, the field of—what is it now, 30…

Calling Terpsichore

It must be a brain-wiring thing, or maybe it’s my complete lack of rhythm combined with the personal grace of a blind, drunk duck, but dance is an eternal mystery to me. I’ll understand quantum physics before I’ll understand the pleasure other people get from watching barefoot dancers prance, jump…

What First Amendment?

What First Amendment?: Here it is the third week in March, and so far this month we haven’t written about anyone suing the Dallas County jail. So sorry. We’ve been distracted by March Madness. (Go Salukis!) Back to business: The latest plaintiff up to the plate is Prison Legal News,…

Junk Mail

After the jump, Patrick “Buzz” Williams puts his stamp on some mayoral-candidate mailers that arrived this week. We just didn’t want Max Wells, Tom Leppert, Darrell Jordan and Sam Coats to feel as though their money was going to waste…

Zoom, Zoom

Some people go to the Dallas Auto Show to see the bright and shiny new cars, but not me. I go for an emotional roller coaster that’s better than a night at the theater. There’s sadness: The sight of lovely women whose careers come down to standing next to cars…

Nonissue

Nonissue: Buzz is not a big believer in conspiracy theories. Oswald? He did it. Elvis? Dead. So nearly two years ago (two!) when the feds were wheeling files out of the offices of what seemed like every black politician in town as part of an alleged corruption probe linked to…

No Love Here

Lew Blackburn, at right, doesn’t seem to quite know the meaning of the word “impressive.” If you want to know why the Dallas Independent School District seems to have a spending scandal more often than the Dallas Mavericks lose a game, well, maybe part of the answer lies with trustees…

TXU’s Winged Friends

A place for birds to live, as long as they don’t breath the polluted air. A year ago this month, before the brouhaha surrounding TXU’s coal-fired power plans peaked last month in a buyout of the company, the utility made more environmentally friendly headlines. In one of the stories, an…

Just My Type

A woman should ask a man’s advice about clothes? In what universe? What an easy, breezy digital society we live in. E-mails and e-cards are composed without a second thought, off to their destination before we can say “bare minimum effort required.” Nobody sends real, live letters anymore — nobody…

Green is Golden

So, Sunday, my partner in dining and I were about to tuck into some deliciously bad for us brunch at our neighborhood’s pride, the Gold Rush Cafe. As is the case for most meals at the Gold Rush, we ran into five people we knew, including our own Jim Schutze…

More on Hate Crime Trial in Denton

Jamie Beck, first assistant to Denton County District Attorney Paul Johnson, sheds some light on the “hate crime” trial that took place last week in Denton. On Friday, a jury acquitted George Clifton Young of assault under the Texas hate crime statute. “We believed it was a hate crime,” says…

News From the Flatlands

So after six months in Texas, last week I officially had my strangest experience yet. Dallas Observer business took me to the Panhandle, where I got to stay in the lovely little highway town of Dumas. Like nearby Sunray, home to the world’s largest grain elevator (holds 7 million bushels,…

Light Sabers at the Ready!

Is that a light saber in your pocket, or is this your wedding night? Busy this Saturday? I know it’s St. Patrick’s Day and all, but who really wants to go run around on Lower Greenville, downing pints in broad daylight with a bunch of other drunks wearing green? You…

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts

The perfect man. OK, Miss Lonelyhearts, this one’s for you. Men’s Health magazine did all the work for you in your quest to find Mr. Right by analyzing the single-women to single-men ratio of 101 cities across the nation, and your man is out there somewhere. Criteria also included divorce…

Gay Friendly Denton?

On Monday, a case goes to trial in Denton County that might answer a question brought up last year: Can a crime against a homosexual be successfully prosecuted there? The case involves Christopher McKee, a mental health caseworker who, on December 3, 2005, was badly beaten outside a Denton club…

Zzzzz…Huh? Oh Yeah. That Mayor Thingy.

Have you heard? Tom Leppert is a businessman. There is the glamourous and consequential side of journalism: Covering a presidential race, writing about a war, detailing the side effects of a new cancer drug, profiling Maggie Gyllenhaal. And there is this: Attending a debate for Dallas mayor at 7:30 in…